Believers VS Non-belivers

[edwardcullensotherwoman]

Why is it that if someone believes in something, they will talk about it as exactly that - something they believe in - and not portray it as absolute fact; yet if someone doesn't believe in something, they will say this as an absolute fact and ridicule those who believe?

It's almost as if those who don't believe (in whatever the subject: angels, God, reincarnation) consider themselves superior to those who do, and view those who do as stupid for doing so.

Surely everyone's beliefs are their own belief and opinion - nothing "woo" can be either proven or disproven, so therefore nobody is right or wrong.

It just seems that every thread that starts "Do you believe" on this board ends up in a bun fight with believes defending themselves against non-believers who tell them they're being ridiculous. The clue is in the title of the board - if you don't believe in anything that's likely to be discussed under that heading, just avoid the board!

Ok I'm done. It becomes frustrating eventually, arguing round in circles.

It always amuses me how athiests in their vehement animosity towards religion actually end up sounding like the religious followers they despise.

Examples (paraphrasing here):

1. We (athiests of all flavours) are the ones who are RIGHT/GOOD and they (religious people) are WRONG/EVIL

2. The whole world would better off/ perfect/ a utopia if EVERYONE followed what WE were doing (ie. not believing in God)

3. Those who dont agree with us must be ignorant/mad/evil.

4. The ONLY reason why anyone could possibly not agree with us is because they have been brainwashed from birth.

5. Wouldn't it be a good idea (and a simple solution) to just ban the teaching/propagation/practice of that idea that is different to ours.

Point 4 for me is particularly funny especially how some people can spout it without any awareness that they themselves contradict that view. There are atheists on this thread and many on this board who have spoken about being believers in the past or having relatives (sometimes their own parents or siblings) who are believers. Yet they have managed to overcome this powerful 'indoctrination' and adopt an opposing view. If indoctrination is such a powerful tool that you believe it makes religious people incapable of accepting your conclusions and abandoning their own beliefs, how is it that many have of you have been able to reject your former religious beliefs or the beliefs of your family? Because your special? Some will say that they never believed in it but this again shows that you have a choice to either accept or reject the views you are exposed to in your early life.

Also I have met people who have been born in to atheist families and yet as adults they come to believe in God. My dad was an atheist for many years before he finally changed his views and believed in God. No indoctrination involved there. It may be comforting for some people to explain away the fact that people do not agree with their perspective or views as being a result of that person being brainwashed and so they incapable of seeing the 'truth' that you espouse or of thinking rationally like you but it doesnt make it correct. Its just an easy excuse for you to justify failing to convince someone of your arguments.

I once heard a lecture by a muslim scholar and he said that for an atheist everything that they see around them is a confirmation that God doesnt exist and for a believer everything they see around them is evidence for God's existence. That really makes sense to me. To quote Richard Dawkins again I once saw him on a tv show in which big animals were being dissected say (paraphrased massively) "isnt it amazing how nature gives the illusion of design". For him its an illusion for me its evidence of a designer.

The truth of the matter is that neither atheists or believers can prove undoubtedly either the existence or absence of a God. Yes you can prove certain ideas about God are not true but if I said to you I will stop believing in God if you can definitively prove to me now that God doesnt exist would you be able to do it? Unquestionable evidence that everyone will recognise and accept either way does not exist and that is how its supposed to be otherwise there is no free will. At least Dawkins is humble (never thought I would use that in a sentence with his name) enough to admit that there is probably no God rather then there is definitely no God like some of the atheists here who have declared as a fact something they cant prove. There is no fact about it. You have your reasons and your 'proofs' that are convincing to you for what you ultimately believe and religious people have theirs.

Its not the same thing as the tooth fairy or santa either. As an adult you know how the money gets under your child's pillow because you yourself put it there. Similarly if I dont buy my children christmas presents they wont appear in my house magically because Santa has delivered them. That is definitive proof its not real. However the spiritual experiences that people have can not be explained away as easily. Miraculous things happen in life. You might present rational reasons for why you think they have happened but that is your explanation for yourself.

It is not true that people believe in God with no evidence or proof. I have multiple evidences for why I believe in God, which are personal to me. They might not convince you but they do me. When I look at the world around me and the more I learn about and understand how it works the more I think this could not have all come about by itself and there must be a reason for this. When I look at human history and at the many peoples from all parts of the world that have believed in something more then just this material world that we see in front of us that is evidence for me that there is a God that is communicating to human beings. The similarities in the beliefs and values of various world religions is also proof to me. When I read some religious texts I find arguments in them that convince me of God's existence. As much as I love science (in terms of studying it) it has its limitations. Science explains the mechanism behind things essentially how the universe works. But it doesnt explain how everything started. Science tells you that if you stab someone you can kill them but it doesnt tell you that stabbing that person is wrong.

I dont think religion makes you stop thinking, I think it forces you to think much bigger. About the most important, fundamental things in life rather then just day to day living. I remember once when having a discussion with an athiest I asked him about what he believed was his purpose in life and he replied nothing. That there was no purpose or point for his existence. This to me is infinitely sad. That the organs in our body, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the utensils we use etc all have a purpose but our lives to him meant nothing and were meaningless, without purpose. This idea just doesnt make sense to me.

Some of the greatest thinkers in the world who have contributed the most to advancement in our knowledge and progress have been believers in God. It obviously didnt stop them from thinking. Some would argue that it was due to their faith in a law giver that they sought to find and understand the laws of nature. Why do you need answers to the big questions? Well you need them because they give meaning to our existence and give us reassurance. Questions like Why are we here? What is my purpose? Where am I going? are all too fundamental to be ignored or brushed under the carpet.

I also disagree with the point that it is easier to believe in God and an afterlife then to accept the finality of death. No its not. Its easier to believe that you will not be accountable for your actions after you die and live self-indulgently. That is not to say that all atheists are self indulgent but that if the only consequences you believe you will face are those that you face when you are living that is infinitely less scary then believing that even if you get away with something here you will ultimately face justice for your actions. I worry that I will be accountable for money I borrowed from someone 10 years ago that I havent managed to pay back because I have lost contact with them. I worry that the nasty way I spoke to someone or something I have said about them behind their back in the past will come back and haunt me unless I seek forgiveness from them in this life. That doesnt make me better then others but it certainly doesnt mean that it necessarily makes death less scary.

'Electrons and photons are really electrons and photons grin- but they have behaviours which we can model as waves or particles. As to the first nanoseconds aftert the BB - no idea; maybe humankind will never know but that has no bearing whatever on the fact that something really did happen'.

Yes, agreed, they are. However, we need two models to explain them as they behave very differently depending on the circumstances. It is very hard to explain fringes using photons (especially those created by just one photon) and very hard (maybe impossible) to explain the photoelectric effect using waves.

The thing us some things are unknowable by human kind, as you say above. You are happy to agree that that what happened directly after the big bang is unknowable yet claim to know that there is an objective reality. What is 'real' time. We have a strong feeling that it is linear, but a lot of scientists would claim it may well not be.

I think it is hard to claim that there is no god, and impossible to do so with certainty. This then speaks to the argument about why we should believe in something with no evidence (tooth fairy etc). However, an atheist's idea of evidence and a believer's are not the same. I am not sure science really has an opinion on god, one way or the other, regardless of Dawkins (a biologist, after all, albeit a good one, hardly a science which deals with big questions).

Thanks for your posts peaceful

I'd not got on this today until now and it has moved on somewhat.

Corus you say 'To believe I was created with a purpose would, to me, devalue my life, my potential, and my ability to choose.' I'm interested in why you think that being created for a purpose would devalue you in some way and devalue your potential as a human being? To me, it is the very opposite; I believe that being created for a purpose brings value to who I am - that my intrinsic value is in fact in who I am created to be. This doesn't mean I feel constrained in any way or bound by my 'purpose' - it means that my purpose is more than I can ever imagine, infinite and beautiful in who God has created me to be. My potential seems so much more in the purpose God has for me - I don't see that God restricts potential in any way, but that knowing God releases potential more and more. And again, my ability to choose is in no way affected - I make choices, good and bad, every day. I try to make choices according to my faith, of course, but surely that doesn't restrict choices, unless it's choices which are damaging to me or others, in which case I think the restriction I feel is a good thing?

I know most people have this in terms of conscience (which I believe is God given, of course ) - but I can't understand why believing I am created for purpose makes my ability to choose any lesser.

I find utter freedom in knowing I am created for a purpose. Freer in the potential to be who I am made to be, utterly valued for who I am made to be.

I kind of get it when people say that they don't need a god to live a good life, and therefore putting a god in the picture somehow means that their own efforts are devalued. But it simply doesn't work in that way. It only makes things more clear and our own efforts even more creative in the knowledge of purpose and hope. Hope is not devaluing me, but rather completing me, to coin a dodgy phrase from Jerry Maguire...

larrygrylls - 'Something is either real or it's not.' Really? So are electrons and photons 'really' particles or waves?

Electrons acts like both particles and waves. They are real. The laws they obey are also real and predictable. Their behaviour can be observed, predicted, and calculated. There is nothing unreal about subatomic particles.

Actually this sort of "Oh yeah, so what about Quantum Physics?" really pushes my buttons - sorry, larry. QP doesn't talk about a supernatural fantastical world. It is not proof for God, angels, homeopathy, or any other woo. It can't be trotted out as defence for fuzzy thinking and irrationality.

"It is easy enough to google religious scientists to find a long list of brilliant minds (Einstein amongst them) who believed in some form of god."

Einstein could at best be described as an agnostic. He is on record as having said that he does not believe in a "personal God" and even "a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings".

"Religious scientists" is not a great argument for believers, as very few (natural) scientists believe in the Abrahamic God, in numbers who have always been lower than general public and declining to single-digit percentages over the years.

A 1998 survey published in Nature found that belief in a personal God among top scientists has declined from 28% in 1914 to 7% in 1998, with belief in God as low as 5% among biologists and 7.5% among physicists & astronomers.

"a muslim scholar said that for an atheist everything that they see around them is a confirmation that God doesnt exist and for a believer everything they see around them is evidence for God's existence"

Not really. That assumption that atheists & agnostics have a similar weakness in their convictions to the religious believers' is wishful thinking.

I see no confirmation around me that God doesn't exist. All I see is no proof of a God. That is why I don't believe.

If one day a proof is found, I'll believe. Until then, it is a mystery to me how otherwise rational adults are convinced that there is a deity expecting them to behave in a certain way.

That's a really interesting point, Corus - I have a particular dislike of certain 'Christianese' speak which goes 'God uses you', precisely because I do not believe (or find confirmation of anywhere in the bible) that we are meant to be tools or utensils to be 'used' (dh wrote a thesis on this and I'm writing a book about it among other things). There is no where in scripture which says that 'God uses people' and nowhere to justify people thinking that their purpose is to be some kind of tool in God's higher purpose.

I get what you are saying - because I rally at that too. It simply doesn't enter my sphere of thought when thinking about purpose. Purpose isn't so much about what I have to do - ie I have to fulfil certain criteria to achieve my God-given purpose - but much more about who I am. Purpose is about worshipping God, because worshipping God fulfils me in a way nothing else has ever come close. God created us to worship God and be in relationship with God - but within that comes a wholeness for us - it's not only to soothe some cosmic ego or to pay some duty to some far off deity. It does so much more than this. So purpose, for me, cannot be tied up in the language of utility, but is intrinsically about freedom and wholeness.

I can't 'do' much physically a lot of the time, having chronic disease, so it even more speaks to me that I have a purpose, and it is in being, not doing - being in partnership rather than in 'use'.

Certainly agree re semantics, but I suspect that our 'basic tenets of what makes a good life' would be much more similar than you might think :)

Perhaps we should just write This is not a debate thread in the post title.

It occurs to me that on 'believers vs unbelievers' threads, when Einstein's name is mentioned as a 'religious scientist' (as usually happens!) it would behoove us all to read a bit on what his religious views actually were. Wiki has a fairly comprehensive piece. He is an ally neither of the believers in a personal god nor of 'professional atheists'.

Clever bloke that Einstein.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, the trouble with writing "This is not a debate thread" in the post title is that I could then start a thread called "The holocaust never happened - this is not a debate thread"

I don't think anyone would hesitate to post in that one saying that was nonsense and nor should they.

Yes. TBH threads I've been on which were clearly askign for support seem to pretty much be respected- the OP seemed to be whingeing about debates on threads beginning 'Do you believe...' (and WTF was with the 'the clue is in the title of the board.... er, its Philosophy, Religion and Spirituality, surely subjects that any thinking person is liable to be interested in and which most definitely includes non-theists!)

"Do you believe...." is a question, inviting answers. As this is PRS I would expect those answers to be of a religious, spiritual or philosophical nature. To me it invites discussion (open ended and exploratory) not necessarily debate. And especially not the type of debate (ridicule and circular arguments) that tends to happen here which is more about displacement, projection and preaching and serves no other purpose than to close down the discussion.

It's not the debate that's the problem on some threads though, it's the lack of respect and rudeness. Maybe we need to put "Not a debate" for threads where people just want to share experiences and "Mind your manners" for ones where people are happy to hear both sides of an argument but don't want aggression or derision

As a life long athiest, I too refused to bow my head and pray in infant school, the purpose of life is simple - you live, you die. Have a nice time inbetween. I am not here to breed, I am not here to serve anyone. For me it really is that simple. If someone else thinks differently good luck to them.